Frustrations
by Naatz
Summary: -one-shot, slash, HP/SS, Ron-POV- It was an endless loop -- Harry would fume, Snape would snark, Harry would snap, Snape would insult, and Harry would damage various objects.


**Title**: Frustrations  
**Author** Naatz  
**Rating**: PG  
**Length**: ~1,200 words.  
**Pairing**: SS/HP  
**A/N**: Utterly silly giftfic for Empathic Siren for her birthday. First posted on LJ in December 2006.  
**Disc.**: Harry Potter belongs to whom it belongs, and that 'whom' is not me.

**Summary: ****It was an endless loop -- Harry would fume, Snape would snark, Harry would snap, Snape would insult, and Harry would damage various objects.**

***

**Frustrations**

Neither dealt well with frustration. One would hold it in until he snapped and the other made snide remarks with increasing acidity until the tension lessened. It was an endless loop -- Harry would fume, Snape would snark, Harry would snap, Snape would insult, and Harry would damage various objects.

That was why Ron wasn't very surprised to have a cauldron fall on him the moment he knocked on their door.

It was made of pewter and iron, and it was _heavy_. It hit his wrist on its way to the ground, hitting him in the leg before settling down. He yelped in pain and retreated a step, far from being directly under the window of Snape's workroom.

No sound came from the room above after the cauldron was dropped. Ron wondered whether he should leave now and come back later, or knock again and insist on being admitted. The ache in his extremities decided for him; whenever he moved either his hand or leg, the movement had left an unpleasant throbbing sensation.

He glanced behind him, and then back at the door. He'd come back later – but as he thought that, the door was opened, and Snape stood before him with a crease between his brows, his lips flattened.

"Er," said Ron, who was knocked out of balance. "I could come back later."

"You could also come inside now and distract him for some time," said Snape, and took a step to the side. He crossed his arms over his chest and stretched to his full length, waiting for Ron to pass.

No matter what Harry kept telling Ron, Ron still felt discomfort whenever he met Snape. The man had been his teacher a long time back, and still Ron planned his escape routes and calculated the chances of success they had. That Harry shagged him meant that something was wrong with Harry, in Ron's mind, but then again, whenever something was wrong in Ron's life, it was usually caused by Harry.

While he'd gotten used to that, he had never gotten used to Snape.

With a suspicious glance behind Snape's shoulder, Ron moved forward and fled upstairs, where Harry was likely to be.

Even before he reached the first storey he realised that something was wrong, because the damage reached the top stair: the carpet was torn.

In the corridor itself, the wallpapers had become black, and only one hinge held the door to Harry's study upright.

The worst of the damage was, naturally, in Snape's workroom. In the midst of it all -- torn books, broken vials, shredded work robes -- sat Harry on a high stool, slumping on Snape's table. His hair, disarrayed, fell over his forearms and hid his face from view.

Ron hazarded, "Harry?"

Harry didn't give any indication that he'd heard Ron.

Ron tried again: "Harry?" He walked over to Harry, careful not to step over the ruins of whatever-they-had-been that were strewn all over the floor. From the corner of his eyes he could notice a hole in the wall the size of a clenched fist. "Are you all right?"

Surprisingly, Harry muttered something.

"Eh?"

Harry turned his head so he faced Ron. He looked pale and drawn, and definitely fitting in with the debris well. "He forgot," he mumbled.

Ron blinked. "Forgot what?"

"My birthday," Harry mumbled again. "Didn't have the decency to even admit that he'd forgotten, and tried to make me run his errands for him again." He sighed. "Why am I here?"

Ron thought that the answer was rather obvious. "Because you love him?"

"Well, yeah," said Harry and straightened up. "But that's beside the point."

Ron snorted with amusement.

Harry looked around with dim eyes and sighed. "I may have overreacted."

"I wouldn't say that you _overreacted_, mate," Ron observed aloud. "I'd say, if you'd asked me, that you'd gone ballistic."

Harry sighed again.

Ron asked, "What will you do now?"

"I suppose," Harry said sullenly, "that I'll start by cleaning the room."

"The storey," Ron supplied helpfully.

"The storey?"

Ron nodded. "You got a few hinges."

"Not the hinges!" exclaimed Harry, dismayed. "I'm sick of fixing them every time Severus and I fight."

"Er. Right." Ron didn't want to know about the hinges this intimately. "Well, there's also the carpet and the wallpapers --" then he noticed Harry's clouded face and added quickly, "--but it'll be good to start with this room."

And so he'd done. He began with spelling the dust gone -- there had been a lot of it -- and picking up a few robes that could, with some effort, be tailored back to what they had been. Most of the books were beyond repair, and those Harry set aside carefully so he'd replace them later.

Harry puzzled over the hole in the wall for a while before Ron came to his help and offered to fill it later. As an easy fix, Harry spelt a shredded robe against wind and water and taped it over the wall.

"The thing about hinges," said Harry gloomily when he looked at the door, "is that the doors and the crossbars at the sides wear them through quickly. You can't just _fix_ them, you have to replace them."

Troubled, Ron put his hand on Harry's wrist. "Mate," he said before Harry could continue, "I really don't want to know."

"Oh."

Ron shook his head. "Come on, let's go down and take a break." He didn't wait for Harry's answer before he propelled the dejected man out of the room and down the stairs.

With every step they took, the colour of the wallpaper changed. From the charred ashes that Harry had inflicted on it earlier, to bright colours that no sane wizard would welcome in his house.

"Severus isn't going to like this," Harry muttered at Ron's side, not getting It.

Ron patted him over the shoulder, but didn't remove his hand from there afterwards. Instead, he pushed Harry down the last step and stood behind him, cutting off possible escape attempts.

The ground floor had been decorated while Harry and Ron had busied themselves cleaning. Somebody had even hanged balloons and ribbons to the walls.

Harry asked, "Why are there decorations on the walls?"

Ron laughed and slapped Harry on the back. "Maybe because it's your surprise party."

"Oh." A deep frown settled on Harry's face.

"What's wrong?" asked Ron.

". . . I just thought that I wrecked the upper floor for no reason whatsoever."

"You never have reasons."

Harry sighed.

"But that's all right. We like you all the same."

"Although," a new voice spoke from the lounge, "at times, some of us come close to feeling the opposite." Snape came nearer and took Harry by the arm, staring at him so flatly that Ron could've sworn they still hated each other. He indicated at the open door and asked, "Shall we? The guests should arrive soon."

Harry grinned and held Snape's hand tighter. "Of course," he said. "And, um, I'm sorry about your room."

From his place behind him, Ron could've sworn he heard Snape mutter, "Will feeling sorry stop you from destroying it again in the near future?"

Ron couldn't hear Harry's answer, but he could make an educated guess, for once. Neither dealt well with frustrations, after all.

_~fin_


End file.
